Category Archives: Technology

German band Joasihno strikes a chord in a unique way as it takes its show on the road.

Currently touring in Canada, the two-man band works in concert with a “robotic” element that can play several instruments at the same time.

“Actually we call it psychedelic robot orchestra,” said Cico Beck, one of the creators of the band. “It’s a combination of acoustic instruments but also very trashy robot instruments,” he added.

Once hooked up to wires and set up, instruments that include a xylophone, drum and cymbal play on their own. Another contraption, a horizontal, self-revolving wooden stick, stands atop a microphone stand. The stick contains long strings tied on each end with a wooden ping pong-sized-ball attached. As the stick rotates, the balls hit a block on the floor, creating a hollow knocking sound.

Beck said a computer is at the heart of the self-playing instruments.

“Most of this stuff is controlled by the computer. The computer can translate voltage signals, so the robots are controlled by the voltage, that is controlled by the computer,” Beck said.

Playing in an experimental band with a robot orchestra is not the same as playing in a traditional one, said Nico Siereg, the other Joasihno member.

WATCH: Robotic orchestra

​”It’s a little bit different because you also have in mind that there are machines playing with you, so there’s no reaction from them.”

Siereg said in some ways, once the robots are programmed, he is free to focus on what he is playing and even improvise. The musician said he can envision future scenarios in which technology plays a greater role in creating different types of music; but, he voiced hope that “real music won’t die.”

Even if the robots are not taking over the music world, Beck said it is undeniable that in the 21st century, music and technology are intertwined.

“Technology is like a very important tool that even, very often, it’s also a very important part of inspiration,” he added.

Joasihno performed several shows at the now-concluded music festival and tech conference known as South by Southwest, held in Austin, Texas. The experimental band is hoping its high-tech use of instrumentals will be music to one’s ears. …

German band Joasihno strikes a chord in a unique way as it takes its show on the road.

Currently touring in Canada, the two-man band works in concert with a “robotic” element that can play several instruments at the same time.

“Actually we call it psychedelic robot orchestra,” said Cico Beck, one of the creators of the band. “It’s a combination of acoustic instruments but also very trashy robot instruments,” he added.

Once hooked up to wires and set up, instruments that include a xylophone, drum and cymbal play on their own. Another contraption, a horizontal, self-revolving wooden stick, stands atop a microphone stand. The stick contains long strings tied on each end with a wooden ping pong-sized-ball attached. As the stick rotates, the balls hit a block on the floor, creating a hollow knocking sound.

Beck said a computer is at the heart of the self-playing instruments.

“Most of this stuff is controlled by the computer. The computer can translate voltage signals, so the robots are controlled by the voltage, that is controlled by the computer,” Beck said.

Playing in an experimental band with a robot orchestra is not the same as playing in a traditional one, said Nico Siereg, the other Joasihno member.

WATCH: Robotic orchestra

​”It’s a little bit different because you also have in mind that there are machines playing with you, so there’s no reaction from them.”

Siereg said in some ways, once the robots are programmed, he is free to focus on what he is playing and even improvise. The musician said he can envision future scenarios in which technology plays a greater role in creating different types of music; but, he voiced hope that “real music won’t die.”

Even if the robots are not taking over the music world, Beck said it is undeniable that in the 21st century, music and technology are intertwined.

“Technology is like a very important tool that even, very often, it’s also a very important part of inspiration,” he added.

Joasihno performed several shows at the now-concluded music festival and tech conference known as South by Southwest, held in Austin, Texas. The experimental band is hoping its high-tech use of instrumentals will be music to one’s ears. …

The annual music festival and tech conference, South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, Texas just ended. The event brings together tech startups and musicians from around the globe to network and showcase their work. The types of music played at the festival are as diverse as the musicians there. One band from Germany called Joasihno performed at the festival. The group includes two guys and robots as band members. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has the details. …

The annual music festival and tech conference, South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, Texas just ended. The event brings together tech startups and musicians from around the globe to network and showcase their work. The types of music played at the festival are as diverse as the musicians there. One band from Germany called Joasihno performed at the festival. The group includes two guys and robots as band members. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has the details. …

Lawmakers on both sides of the Atlantic criticized Facebook and its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, after reports surfaced that another company, Cambridge Analytica, improperly harvested information from 50 million Facebook users.

A British lawmaker accused Facebook on Sunday of misleading officials by downplaying the risk of users’ data being shared without their consent.

Conservative legislator Damian Collins, who heads the British Parliament’s media committee, said he would ask Zuckerberg or another Facebook executive to appear before his panel, which is investigating disinformation and “fake news.”

Collins said Facebook has “consistently understated” the risk of data leaks and gave misleading answers to the committee.

“Someone has to take responsibility for this,” he said. “It’s time for Mark Zuckerberg to stop hiding behind his Facebook page.”

Collins also accused the head of the U.K.-based data firm Cambridge Analytica, Alexander Nix, of lying. Nix told the committee last month that his firm had not received data from a researcher accused of obtaining millions of Facebook users’ personal information.

In Washington, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat from Minnesota, said on Twitter that Zuckerberg “needs to testify before Senate Judiciary.”

“This is a major breach that must be investigated,” Klobuchar, a member of the Judiciary Committee, said. “It’s clear these platforms can’t police themselves.”

Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, echoed Klobuchar’s complaint.

“This is more evidence that the online political advertising market is essentially the Wild West,” he said. “It’s clear that, left unregulated, this market will continue to be prone to deception and lacking in transparency.”

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey said on Twitter that “Massachusetts residents deserve answers” and announced that her office will investigate.

The officials reacted to reports in The New York Times and The Guardian of London that Cambridge Analytica, which is best known for working on President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, had improperly obtained Facebook user data and retained it after claiming it had deleted the information.

Former Cambridge Analytica employee Chris Wylie said that the company obtained information from 50 million Facebook users, using it to build psychological profiles so voters could be targeted with ads and stories.

Wylie told Britain’s Channel 4 news that the company was able to amass a huge database very quickly from an app developed by an academic that vacuumed up data from Facebook users who agreed to fill out a survey, as well as their friends and contacts – a process of which most were unaware.

“Imagine I go and ask you: I say, ‘Hey, if I give you a dollar, two dollars, could you fill up this survey for me, just do it on this app’, and you say, ‘Fine,'” he said. “I don’t just capture what your responses are, I capture all of the information about you from Facebook. But also this app then crawls through your social network and captures all of that data also.”

Wylie said that allowed the company to get roughly “50 million plus” Facebook records in several months and he criticized Facebook for facilitating the process.

“Why Facebook didn’t make more inquiries when they started seeing that, you know, tens of millions of records were being pulled this way, I don’t know,” he said.

Lawmaker Collins said he would summon Nix to reappear before the Parliament committee.

“It seems clear that he has deliberately misled the committee and Parliament by giving false statements,” Collins said. …

Lawmakers on both sides of the Atlantic criticized Facebook and its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, after reports surfaced that another company, Cambridge Analytica, improperly harvested information from 50 million Facebook users.

A British lawmaker accused Facebook on Sunday of misleading officials by downplaying the risk of users’ data being shared without their consent.

Conservative legislator Damian Collins, who heads the British Parliament’s media committee, said he would ask Zuckerberg or another Facebook executive to appear before his panel, which is investigating disinformation and “fake news.”

Collins said Facebook has “consistently understated” the risk of data leaks and gave misleading answers to the committee.

“Someone has to take responsibility for this,” he said. “It’s time for Mark Zuckerberg to stop hiding behind his Facebook page.”

Collins also accused the head of the U.K.-based data firm Cambridge Analytica, Alexander Nix, of lying. Nix told the committee last month that his firm had not received data from a researcher accused of obtaining millions of Facebook users’ personal information.

In Washington, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat from Minnesota, said on Twitter that Zuckerberg “needs to testify before Senate Judiciary.”

“This is a major breach that must be investigated,” Klobuchar, a member of the Judiciary Committee, said. “It’s clear these platforms can’t police themselves.”

Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, echoed Klobuchar’s complaint.

“This is more evidence that the online political advertising market is essentially the Wild West,” he said. “It’s clear that, left unregulated, this market will continue to be prone to deception and lacking in transparency.”

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey said on Twitter that “Massachusetts residents deserve answers” and announced that her office will investigate.

The officials reacted to reports in The New York Times and The Guardian of London that Cambridge Analytica, which is best known for working on President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, had improperly obtained Facebook user data and retained it after claiming it had deleted the information.

Former Cambridge Analytica employee Chris Wylie said that the company obtained information from 50 million Facebook users, using it to build psychological profiles so voters could be targeted with ads and stories.

Wylie told Britain’s Channel 4 news that the company was able to amass a huge database very quickly from an app developed by an academic that vacuumed up data from Facebook users who agreed to fill out a survey, as well as their friends and contacts – a process of which most were unaware.

“Imagine I go and ask you: I say, ‘Hey, if I give you a dollar, two dollars, could you fill up this survey for me, just do it on this app’, and you say, ‘Fine,'” he said. “I don’t just capture what your responses are, I capture all of the information about you from Facebook. But also this app then crawls through your social network and captures all of that data also.”

Wylie said that allowed the company to get roughly “50 million plus” Facebook records in several months and he criticized Facebook for facilitating the process.

“Why Facebook didn’t make more inquiries when they started seeing that, you know, tens of millions of records were being pulled this way, I don’t know,” he said.

Lawmaker Collins said he would summon Nix to reappear before the Parliament committee.

“It seems clear that he has deliberately misled the committee and Parliament by giving false statements,” Collins said. …

At this week’s three-day Energy Innovation Summit, organized annually by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency, or ARPA-e for short, experts, entrepreneurs, investors and government officials shared ideas, research results and experiences about challenges facing the generation, transformation, distribution and storage of all forms of energy. VOA’s George Putic gives an overview. …

Facebook Inc. on Friday said it was suspending political data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica, which worked for President Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign, after finding data privacy policies had been violated.

Facebook said in a statement that it suspended Cambridge Analytica and its parent group Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL) after receiving reports that they did not delete information about Facebook users that had been inappropriately shared.

Cambridge Analytica was not immediately available for comment. Facebook did not mention the Trump campaign or any political campaigns in its statement, attributed to company Deputy General Counsel Paul Grewal.

“We will take legal action if necessary to hold them responsible and accountable for any unlawful behavior,” Facebook said, adding that it was continuing to investigate the claims.

Cruz, Trump campaigns

Cambridge Analytica worked for the failed presidential campaign of U.S. Senator Ted Cruz and then for the presidential campaign of Donald Trump. On its website, it says it “provided the Donald J. Trump for President campaign with the expertise and insights that helped win the White House.”

Brad Parscale, who ran Trump’s digital ad operation in 2016 and is his 2020 campaign manager, declined to comment Friday.

In past interviews with Reuters, Parscale has said that Cambridge Analytica played a minor role as a contractor in the 2016 Trump campaign, and that the campaign used voter data from a Republican-affiliated organization rather than Cambridge Analytica.

Facebook’s Grewal said the company was taking the unusual step of announcing the suspension “given the public prominence” of Cambridge Analytica and its parent organization.

No ads, administering pages

The suspension means Cambridge Analytica and SCL cannot buy ads on the world’s largest social media network or administer pages belonging to clients, Andrew Bosworth, a Facebook vice president, said in a Twitter post.

Trump’s campaign hired Cambridge Analytica in June 2016 and paid it more than $6.2 million, according to Federal Election Commission records.

Cambridge Analytica says it uses “behavioral microtargeting,” or combining analysis of people’s personalities with demographics, to predict and influence mass behavior. It says it has data on 220 million Americans, two-thirds of the U.S. population.

It has worked on other campaigns in the United States and other countries, and it is funded by Robert Mercer, a prominent supporter of politically conservative groups. Facebook in its statement described a rocky relationship with Cambridge Analytica and two individuals going back to 2015.

Professor’s app

That year, Facebook said, it learned that University of Cambridge professor Aleksandr Kogan lied to the company and violated its policies by sharing data that he acquired with a so-called “research app” that used Facebook’s login system.

Kogan was not immediately available for comment.

The app was downloaded by about 270,000 people. Facebook said that Kogan gained access to profile and other information “in a legitimate way” but “he did not subsequently abide by our rules” when he passed the data to SCL/Cambridge Analytica and Christopher Wylie of Eunoia Technologies.

Eunoia did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Facebook said it cut ties to Kogan’s app when it learned of the violation in 2015, and asked for certification from Kogan and all parties he had given data to that the information had been destroyed.

Although all certified that they had destroyed the data, Facebook said that it received reports in the past several days that “not all data was deleted,” prompting the suspension announced Friday. …

Fingerprints can unlock doors, phones and more, but are consumers ready to pay with them?

Visa, the financial services giant, thinks so.

The company, which backs credit, debit and prepaid cards, has started pilot tests of cards that have a built-in fingerprint reader. Users place their finger on the sensor area and either insert the card’s chip into a reader or hold it above a payment terminal.

By using their fingerprint, customers can skip having to enter a PIN or signing off on a purchase.

A user’s fingerprint is compared against a previously registered pattern, which is stored as a cryptogram on the card. A red or green light on the card indicates whether the fingerprints match.

“The card is trained to use your biometric thumbprint and since your thumbprint is unique, it can only be activated by the individual that’s trained the card,” said Matt Smith, vice president of platform strategy at Visa. For those who share their card with others, transactions would revert to PIN number, or pen and signature for processing.

The cards will be issued by Utah-based Mountain America Credit Union and the Bank of Cyprus.

WATCH: Company Tests Cards with Built-in Fingerprint Reader

​Biological traits

Visa is not the first digital payments company to explore the growing field of biometrics, which relies on people’s unique biological traits, like the iris pattern of their eyes, to ensure that they are who they say they are.

Last year, Mastercard began testing a fingerprint-enabled card at Pick n Pay stores in South Africa.

Visa surveyed 1,000 Americans on their perceptions of biometrics and found that 86 percent were “interested” in biometrics as a form of authentication or a way to make payments.

Users of mobile wallets Apple Pay and Google Pay, both compatible with Visa and Mastercard, already can take advantage of paying with their fingerprints.

Not having to provide a signature or PIN number may be convenient, but is it secure?

To answer that question, Anil Jain, a professor and biometrics researcher at Michigan State University, has created with his students fake or spoof fingerprints that have been successful in unlocking systems that rely on biometric credentials.

Even so, Jain says the process isn’t easy. It first involves obtaining fingerprints to work with, either with a person’s consent or the ability to lift and replicate physical fingerprints left on everyday surfaces.

Jain believes it’s harder to steal biometric data from a mobile phone or credit card chip (like Visa’s), as opposed to biometric data stored in a central database, such as a government server containing fingerprint records.

Focusing on the end security system, Jain and his students have devised both hardware and software solutions that can better detect the difference between a real, human fingerprint vs. a fake fingerprint.

Tested materials

In one study, they tested fake fingerprints made of everything from PlayDoh to Ecoflex, a silicone rubber often used to create makeup special effects for television and film.

“We have shown that we can do a fairly good job in detecting spoofs versus real fingerprints. And I think in most of the cases, it’s the issue of how to raise the bar for the hacker, so that it is becoming more and more difficult for the hacker to attack the system,”Jain said.

“No security system is foolproof. The idea is to make it as difficult (as possible) for an imposter to use it,” he added.

Jain said additional biometrics can be implemented for major purchases. A $100,000 purchase at Tiffany’s, for example, could warrant a facial recognition scan in addition to a fingerprint scan.

In the end, biometrics are here to stay, especially as hardware and software costs come down and consumer adoption increases he said.

Jain offered a bit of common sense for the era of biometrics: “Don’t post your fingerprints,” he said, chuckling. …

Fingerprints can unlock doors, phones and more, but are consumers ready to pay with them?

Visa, the financial services giant, thinks so.

The company, which backs credit, debit and prepaid cards, has started pilot tests of cards that have a built-in fingerprint reader. Users place their finger on the sensor area and either insert the card’s chip into a reader or hold it above a payment terminal.

By using their fingerprint, customers can skip having to enter a PIN or signing off on a purchase.

A user’s fingerprint is compared against a previously registered pattern, which is stored as a cryptogram on the card. A red or green light on the card indicates whether the fingerprints match.

“The card is trained to use your biometric thumbprint and since your thumbprint is unique, it can only be activated by the individual that’s trained the card,” said Matt Smith, vice president of platform strategy at Visa. For those who share their card with others, transactions would revert to PIN number, or pen and signature for processing.

The cards will be issued by Utah-based Mountain America Credit Union and the Bank of Cyprus.

WATCH: Company Tests Cards with Built-in Fingerprint Reader

​Biological traits

Visa is not the first digital payments company to explore the growing field of biometrics, which relies on people’s unique biological traits, like the iris pattern of their eyes, to ensure that they are who they say they are.

Last year, Mastercard began testing a fingerprint-enabled card at Pick n Pay stores in South Africa.

Visa surveyed 1,000 Americans on their perceptions of biometrics and found that 86 percent were “interested” in biometrics as a form of authentication or a way to make payments.

Users of mobile wallets Apple Pay and Google Pay, both compatible with Visa and Mastercard, already can take advantage of paying with their fingerprints.

Not having to provide a signature or PIN number may be convenient, but is it secure?

To answer that question, Anil Jain, a professor and biometrics researcher at Michigan State University, has created with his students fake or spoof fingerprints that have been successful in unlocking systems that rely on biometric credentials.

Even so, Jain says the process isn’t easy. It first involves obtaining fingerprints to work with, either with a person’s consent or the ability to lift and replicate physical fingerprints left on everyday surfaces.

Jain believes it’s harder to steal biometric data from a mobile phone or credit card chip (like Visa’s), as opposed to biometric data stored in a central database, such as a government server containing fingerprint records.

Focusing on the end security system, Jain and his students have devised both hardware and software solutions that can better detect the difference between a real, human fingerprint vs. a fake fingerprint.

Tested materials

In one study, they tested fake fingerprints made of everything from PlayDoh to Ecoflex, a silicone rubber often used to create makeup special effects for television and film.

“We have shown that we can do a fairly good job in detecting spoofs versus real fingerprints. And I think in most of the cases, it’s the issue of how to raise the bar for the hacker, so that it is becoming more and more difficult for the hacker to attack the system,”Jain said.

“No security system is foolproof. The idea is to make it as difficult (as possible) for an imposter to use it,” he added.

Jain said additional biometrics can be implemented for major purchases. A $100,000 purchase at Tiffany’s, for example, could warrant a facial recognition scan in addition to a fingerprint scan.

In the end, biometrics are here to stay, especially as hardware and software costs come down and consumer adoption increases he said.

Jain offered a bit of common sense for the era of biometrics: “Don’t post your fingerprints,” he said, chuckling. …